'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

Re: 'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

Just look at Bach or Beethoven for some ideas. If you can, introduce some countersubjects, and circulate those through the voices. I'd need a bit more information about the piece to give some more concrete ideas. You could set up a lisztian t+v as well, continually embellishing the melody out of recognition.

Re: 'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

Thanks for your ideas, I'll upload my theme +variations so far so you can listen to it.
But I have to ask, what's a lisztian t+v? I've never heard of it.

Re: 'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

a theme and variation (t+v) in the style of liszt, aka la campanella, totentanz, etc. Starting with one theme, and putting in more and more runs and embellishments.

Sorry, I wasn't that clear.

Ok, after listening to it, it's a bit different that what I first imagined. Here are a few other options that come to mind. I'm not sure if you've done them or not, I wasn't listening that closely.

-invert the entire song, have the main melody in the lower register, and have some sort of accompaniment higher and louder.
-make some shifts from major to minor, and vice versa.
-switch it from straight to 8ths to jazzier 8ths, swing it a bit.
-syncopate the melody
-fool with time signatures - make it a waltz.

there's plenty of stuff to do. you could always just modify the bassline to a different rhythm.

keep experimenting, it sounds good.

Re: 'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

Oh yeah, hahaha, I knew I was missing something obvious.
Thanks very much for your input.

Re: 'Sup music theory students. Suggestions needed, please.

Sorry for not responding. I don't usually hang round these parts 'cause it usually sucks.

I improvise on themes on the piano all the time. And I love classical music. You can trust me, brah.

One note: if your goal is to write a piece for the sole purpose of getting an A in the class, then while this post will be of some use, I am writing this in the hopes that you will do this project like a serious composition.

Now let's get dirty.

A caveat with all the retrograde and inversion stuff: Simply doing that and then saying, "ok I'm done" is LAME. Lame lame lame. I hope you did more than just that when you consider doing it And I mean a lot more. You are not an A level student if you're going to do that solely and say "I'm done." If you're going to do retrograde and inversion, expand on it a lot. In Rach's variation 18 in his famous rhapsody, he inverts the motif in the main theme. BUT he also expands a lot on it, and he even changes modes when he does it. Now THAT'S how you do an inversion. More on Rachmaninoff's variations below.

In response to Xandertrax's suggestions:

I strongly suggest not changing the time signature because in most cases it'll sound forced. I've seen it done a few times with success, as in Elgar's Nimrod Variations (3rd variation, "RBT").

(Really, all of that gimmicky stuff-- inversions, time signature change, retrograde-- should never be repeated in a set of variations, even if you're doing it correctly by expanding on it. So while you've already done a few of those variations, and although I haven't heard your work yet, I believe you can do a lot better than what you currently have based on this principle alone.)

The occasional addition of a new theme, restrained only to one variation for sole effect of coloring that one variation, is good especially if it acts as counterpoint. But I frown upon repeating an added theme throughout other variations. And don't do it in, like, every damn variation.

The amount of times nature will allow you to change modes in a piece and still end up with a good piece depends on the theme. Some themes permit a lot of mode changes. Other themes don't really allow the composer to change the mode all too much, and an entire set of variations may stay completely restrained to either the major or minor mode! Play it by ear. Usually major mode themes are more versatile in the key change department, but this is not a steadfast rule.

Now there are plenty of sets of variations I could recommend-- it's not exactly an uncommon thing for a composer to write a piece and then write lots of variations off the theme. But if there's anything you must listen to, let it be the variations on Paganini's caprice no. 24. The piece itself is a set of variations on a theme for solo violin, but it has a lot of spin-offs. Brahms has about a bajillion variations on it, spanning two "books." Rachmaninoff did a whole piano concerto on it (he dubs it as a rhapsody though). There's also a piece by Nathan Milstein called "Paganiniana" which is a whole new set of violin solo variations. In total, that's gotta be at LEAST 60 variations, all on one theme. Granted, it's a versatile theme. But that's about 50 minutes of music on one damn theme. All of these piece add up to show how one theme can be spun a million or so ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPcnGrie__M - Paganini's Caprice No. 24, the original
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiTwSK8PvIM - Brahms's Variations
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGLs4nOOtpA (pt 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qhJ3ST6qyU (pt 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Z-HCq5EeU - Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5bP1CdfM-8 (pt 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90MuPqYtV_k (pt 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQjzKVkFqag - Milstein's Paganiniana

The most important thing to do while listening is to notice how the chords differ in each variation because being able to change the chord progression will give you a lot more versatility when writing your own variations. For example, some of those variations replace [i - iv] with [V7 of iv - iv] which is a very similar progression, or instead of cadencing at the end with [N6 - i - V7 - i], it'll use a [V7 of N6 - N6 - V7 - i] cadence. Or in the original set of variations when the violinist plays just harmonics, instead of [i - V - i - V] in the beginning of the theme, there is a V of V of some sort thrown in. These are relatively small changes, but they can give you a LOT of versatility when you're tackling your variations.

Another idea: just listen to some misc piece on your hard drive or on the radio and think of how you can fit your theme into the stylings of the piece.

Last idea, this one being the best idea so listen up! Write a few variations like chaconnes. Duh. Actually, that's what a lot of variations on themes actually are, and in my experience that's the easiest way to start writing a variation even if the final product deviates from the original implied chord progression. And then if you do deviate, you can just add some textures that reference the main theme after that to make it a legit variation. Not only is this easy to do, but it's easy to recycle. The reason why the Paganini theme is so versatile is because it's based around a simple motif, which is then based off an implied chord progression. Not to mention the chord progression is really really good. So a lot of variations are just replacements of the motif with a new one, that fit the structure of the theme itself. The original Caprice No. 24 and Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody are mostly filled with exceptions to this-- the variations in these pieces tend to stay more true to the original theme. However, the Brahms and Milstein variations exemplify this use of the theme well.